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  "description": "Summarised by Centrist Taxpayers’ Union board member Peter Williams says National is on the verge...",
  "path": "/national-accused-of-reviving-co-governance-in-local-water-plans/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-20T00:18:38.000Z",
  "site": "https://goodoil.news",
  "tags": [
    "Centrist",
    "Read more over at Brash and Mitchell",
    "Receive our free newsletter here"
  ],
  "textContent": "Summarised by Centrist\n\n**Taxpayers’ Union board member Peter Williams says National is on the verge of locking in the very sort of co-governance model it promised voters it would scrap.**\n\n**Williams says he joined the fight against Nanaia Mahuta’s Three Waters reforms in 2022 and believed that, with the election of the Luxon government, “we had won”. Instead, he says, “co-governance of local water is back”.**\n\nHe points to National’s 2023 “Local Water Done Well” policy and repeated statements from now-Minister Simon Watts that any alternative model would not include co-governance. Watts had said: “National’s alternative to Three Waters will not have co-governance with ratepayer-owned assets remaining under ultimate democratic control.” In Tauranga, Williams notes, Watts went further and called it a “bottom line”, saying: “Co-governance will not be part of any alternative model that National proposes in a future government, and that is a bottom line.”\n\nHe writes that Watts has “just waved through local ‘Water Services Delivery Plans’ that explicitly include co-governance as part of the new water entities”.\n\nHe also claims that a “secret Iwi ‘Partnership Agreement’ exists” in Wellington and that it “trumps the entity’s constitution and is binding on the water entity, its shareholder councils, and the Board”.\n\nWilliams also objects to the plan’s adoption of “restoring Te Mana o te Wai” as the entity’s vision. He says this “effectively ties the hands of the directors” and will require them to protect the “mana” and “spiritual health” of water in line with iwi interpretation.\n\nHe argues that National’s failure to follow through on its mandate for change may be one reason it is “suffering in the polls”.\n\nRead more over at Brash and Mitchell\n\nReceive our free newsletter here",
  "title": "National accused of reviving co-governance in local water plans",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-20T02:51:34.691Z"
}